


A Thousand More

by Winterstar



Series: I would walk 500 miles [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Babies, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Superhusbands, advanced directive discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve is critically injured, Tony has to face hard truths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand More

Why is the room dark?

He doesn’t ask the question out loud, he cannot speak. The truths are too near, almost breaking the surface. If the truth crests, it will become his reality and he staunchly refuses to hear it, to see it, to support it, or recognize it.

His truth is yesterday. His truth is all the days from the beginning to the moments before he was called on the phone. His truth is the breath between his greeting as he connected the line and the next breath. His truth is before knowing. His truth does not exist now.

His eyes drift over the room and he knows he doesn’t have the kind of strength required to attend this reality. He knows the kind of strength he has grows from intellect, from arrogance, from bravado. His strength, the real power, comes from a different source. His eyes glance, dart really, to the other – the one he knows his strength originates from – but like superman, his strength comes from the sun – but not the real sun. The one lying on the bed.

Not a bed.

A gurney.

Torn apart.

He shies away from the reality again, he squeezes his eyes closed and works it out that his life revolves around the other truths, the fake truth of yesterday, of moments before, of breathing and replying before hearing.

“The mission took a hit.”

He collapses back on the chair but it doesn’t help. The echoes of the truth follow him. 

“The Captain went down.”

He thinks he’ll always hate Barton’s voice now. Don’t kill the messenger. In Roman times, they did, didn’t they?

“What do you mean, the Captain went down?” Tony only recalls the quaver in his voice, because the strength dissipated the moment he heard the words.

“Cap, Steve went down, he took a hit, a bad one, Tony.”

Barton had used his first name, Barton never uses his first name. He thinks he might have fallen over, or fragmented into a million pieces like Humpty Dumpty. No one will be able to collect all the pieces because some of them exploded, smashed, collided with the impossibility of the sentence.

He had asked, “How bad?” But he recalls the words getting bollixed up in his throat. Someone else might have taken over at that point. It might have been Pepper; he’s not sure.

“The doctors were able to get his heart started again,” Barton replied.

He went deaf then, completely and utterly deaf. He could not discern a sound from over the phone and he’s sure Pepper must have chimed in. Steve had died. 

Died.

He shivers as he looks up at the bed and bends over at the waist, not sure he can breathe, not sure he’s not going to vomit. 

Words like life support popped into the conversation. Words like chances and percentages, and hope for the serum to do something, anything to repair the irreparable damage to Steve’s battle beaten body.

There are tubes and lines and monitors situated around the lifeless thing that had once been Steve. He had been invincible. He had been the super soldier who lived through everything and anything. But everything has its limits.

Tony recalls how Steve worried and held him and said he’d never be able to take it if Tony went first. They both knew it was _when_ and not _if_. Steve had lost so much in his time and holding onto Tony at the start had only been a lifeline, an anchor and then they’d become, transformed into a single breath together.

He doesn’t listen when the door creaks open, when others come to pay their respects. He forgets his responsibilities, the questions, and the condolences. The doctors talk to him, but the fog never lifts. He sits and listens with a glass between them. It really isn’t there, but an impenetrable boundary has grown like bullet proof glass around him. He shutters off his heart, and his head, and he thinks of nothing more.

Until they bring her.

Someone, it might be Natasha, it might be Maria, he doesn’t know coaxes him out of his chair at Steve’s bedside and he ends up in the atrium. It’s part of the hospital, he’s sure, but he has no idea how his feet brought him here, he cannot count the footsteps. He’s not sure he can find his way back.

Maybe that was the point.

Because Maggie’s there. 

She’s only two and already walking. They started calling her Peggy but that seemed wrong and Steve had been uncomfortable with it. Margie turned to Maggie and so they call their little daughter with her chestnut ringlets and wild eyes and bell like laughter Maggie. 

“Dada!” she squeals and runs on her little chubby legs to him as he enters the atrium where there’s a café, and chairs and families all awaiting word of their loved ones. She raises her arms and something, some veil melts away. He scoops her up and feels the prickle of hot tears in his eyes. 

How is he supposed to tell her? 

What is he supposed to tell her?

She rubs her face against his, screeching and saying it tickles over and again. He doesn’t even know who has been caring for their daughter but when he looks up he sees Pepper and Rhodey standing there. Pepper has the carebag, not a diaper bag – Maggie doesn’t allow them to call it that since she’s a big girl and uses the potty now – on her shoulder. 

“Sweetie,” Tony says and his voice falters. He hopes she doesn’t ask. But she will, she’s smart and full of joy. 

“Missed you, Dada.”

“Missed you too,” Tony says and buries his face in her curls. 

“Tony?” Pepper says and joins him as they settle onto one of the chairs near a table. 

Should they be eating? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t think he’s eaten in days.

“Tony, they said it might be a while,” Pepper says, her tone tentative as she seeks out his mood.

“They said, it might be forever.” His words are quipped and short, and he thinks nasty. 

She doesn’t retort, only reaches out and clasps his hand. He wants to draw away, but she grips him further, tighter, keeping him sound, and sane, as always. 

“The serum,” he says and suddenly someone’s taking Margaret. She’s being led away by Natasha and Barton. “It’s too much, too overwhelmed they think.”

“But with a little time, and medical support, the doctors said he could survive,” Pepper says.

“We both know that’s not true,” Tony says and the look of despair in her eyes hurts more because he wanted her to deny the truth, he wanted her to fight against the truth. “The doctors don’t know shit. They’re just giving him palliative care right now.”

“It could help,” Rhodey says. “You can’t say you know his system. Not even Banner knows his system.”

Abruptly the anger he’s been holding in all these many hours takes over and he says, “They gave him a twenty percent chance with the serum. Twenty percent. That’s all. His organs are failing, the blast tore him apart. He’s not coming home. The damned doctors are only trying to keep him alive long enough to learn about the serum.”

“Tony,” Bruce says from the side and walks over to their little huddle. “They are trying to save him.”

“Then why isn’t he waking up?” Tony says and he’s blind due to the tears he holds back. “Why isn’t he fucking waking up?” He jumps up and he doesn’t give a shit who he hurts or if Bruce goes full Hulk on him. “I’ll tell you why, the blast rip a whole through his chest, cracked open his damned skull. His brains were-.” He gasps and grabs at his shirt. The nausea hits him and he gags trying not to vomit all over himself. 

He rushes away from them, gets to the bathroom on time to puke into the sink. Thankfully no one follows him in. He clings to the sink, sick and shaking and eyes burning with fear and hate and anger and denial and death. 

It takes a full ten minutes before he’s able to pull himself upright, before he can rinse cold water on his face, before he can straighten his shirt and wash out his mouth, and decide on a course of action. He leaves the bathroom and finds them standing, waiting for him.

“Where’s my daughter?”

Pepper points to the side room next to the atrium. It’s for families with children, it is a little playroom and she’s pretending to have tea with Barton. He’s bent over with his knees nearly to his chest as he sits in the tiny chair, with a plastic pink cup, and his finger out as he pretends to drink. 

Before he moves to retrieve her, he goes back to the nurses’ station. Everyone follows him but Barton and his daughter. When he gets the group of doctors treating Steve to pay attention to him, he says, “I want you to pull the plug.”

Someone gasps behind him.

“Steve wouldn’t want this, he would want to go,” Tony stops, clears his throat. “He wouldn’t want this. Pull the plug.”

“If we take him off of the respirator, he will die,” the doctor says. “His lungs took the major damage from the blast.”

“Take him off, take him off after I leave,” Tony says. He doesn’t turn around but asks. “Rhodey, will you stay and make sure?”

“Yeah, sure, I will.”

Tony nods and asks for whatever paper work they need. It takes some time but after a lot of arguing they decide to follow Steve’s directive. He didn’t want it this way. It’s clear in his documents. 

Tony signs everything, doesn’t visit Steve one more time, only looks through the window at the husk of a man on the bed. That isn’t his husband. His husband is gone.

He nods, and presses his lips together in a hard line. He tries not to feel the hot flush of pain and tears and sorrow, but it’s there to heat him now and leave him cold tomorrow. Eventually, he leaves.

He finds Maggie and picks her up. She plays with the dog tags around his neck; Steve had given them to him long ago. Tony thinks of nothing, he only wants to get home, and he does. It is a long trip or a short one. He doesn’t remember.

Once he snuggles Maggie in bed and kisses her good night she asks after her Papa.

“Papa isn’t coming home again,” Tony says. 

“Sup’hero’n?”

“Yeah, now, go to sleep,” Tony says and dies a little inside. He knows when the sun comes up he’ll have truths to face and a thousand years more to know that Steve will not be at his side again. 

He falls asleep next to his daughter on her tiny bed. It might be the first time he’s slept since the whole nightmare began. A persistent buzzing wakes him in the morning. He stumbles out of bed, it’s not even five a.m.. Grumbling, he finds his way to the bathroom as he answers the phone. It’s Bruce.

“Yeah?” 

“He’s asking for you.”

“What?” Tony rubs at his face, feels like sand paper has been grated across his eyeballs. 

“You did the right thing, Tony, twelve hours without medical care, and the serum took off. Seriously, whatever the hell they were giving him inhibited the-.”

“What? What the hell?” He wavers on his feet. He can’t breathe. “Christ, what?”

“Tony, Steve is awake and he’s asking for you,” Bruce says. “He’s still in rough shape, barely able to speak, but we made out one word, your name.”

“Holy shit, holy fuck,” Tony says and claps a hand to his forehead. “I’ll be right there, soon. Today, gotta get Maggie ready.”

“Rhodes is coming over to help out, just get here, he needs you,” Bruce says.

Tony disconnects and, shaking, collapses to the floor. “A thousand more, a thousand more.” Tears burn his cheeks again, but this time he cannot stop laughing and smiling. “A thousand more, baby.”

**Author's Note:**

> Will there be more of this verse??? Not sure. But you can follow me on [tumblr](http://winterstar95.tumblr.com) if you want some insight to my writing and me!


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